I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it.

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.

The best moments involve a loss of control. It's a kind of rapture, and it can happen with words and phrases fairly often - completely surprising combinations that make a higher kind of sense, that come to you out of nowhere. But rarely for extended periods, for paragraphs and pages - I think poets must have more access to this state than novelists do.

We need time to lose interest in things.

World is supposed to mean something that's self-contained. but nothing is self-contained.

The genius of the primitive mind is that it can render human helplessness in noble and beautiful ways.

For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.